The Grey
by Cinderellakai16
Summary: Kakashi always knew war, but can he save someone who haunts him in his dreams? AU, one-shot, possible continuation, KakaXOC


Disclaimer: I own the characters of Naruto like I own the Statue of Liberty. I don't! haha.

Anyways… this is a little thing I wrote to get the gears in my brain going. Chapter 2 of Serendipity is in progress, but I hit a rut and decided to vent my frustration with something else. If you guys like it, I might continue it. :D

Characters: Kakashi and my randomly made-up OC.

Reviews please!

--

**The Gray:**

Empty. The sound was empty.

Yes. Yes it was. So… very empty.

Just like his distorted mind.

Every _tap_ against the cold window sounded just as agonizingly hollow as the last. Every _tap _was just as frighteningly _loud_ as the last. But, so it seemed, the _tap plip, tap plip_ against the kitchen floor was growing steadily louder than every thing else with every passing noise. That was all he had heard lately. Noise. Silence and noise.

Absently, he knew he was in pain. Great physical pain. Somewhere, outside of the stupor, various parts of his anatomy where throbbing where blood was gushing out, either in jagged cuts, or partially healed ones. At that time, it didn't seem like _that_ big of a deal.

Of course it wasn't. He was practically a vegetable.

Practically.

Un-feigning his expression- which was pretty much as emotionless as a human being could get without committing suicide- he slowly, lazily blinked.

Water was dripping from his silvery hair into his one, visible eye; making it hard for him to see the grey blob of the rainy window anymore. Everything swirled and contorted, deceiving him of the actual shape.

His vision had been like that for the past seventy-two hours, so it seemed. Unfocused; only able to catch the things it thought was important. Everything blurred, as though going to fast; melting into one huge moving blob of seemingly non-existent color. It was never the same; which was confusing. So… confusing…

He mused that it wasn't so confusing anymore. It was just all grey. Like all the colors had been washed away to reveal the underside. The bland canvas that the painted had been created upon.

The blasé standard was almost too much emotion for him at the moment. Where they all once as grey as his kitchen?

Rolling his eye toward the window once more, he noticed it was dirty; as though covered by dust. How long had it been since he cleaned it? Three months? Six? However the amount of time he had been away from home, he couldn't seem to remember the details. Of anything. Not at the moment, anyway. Or rather, he didn't _want _to remember.

_It's November…,_ he supposed, making the effort to think something coherent, unlike the various half-comprehensible shouts he had been hearing in his mind for the past few hours. Judging by the rain outside his window, it must have been somewhere in there. Maybe early December.

Maybe.

Everything was uncertain. But, then again, so was he. Just like he wasn't really sure what had caused him to sit on his kitchen chair for god knows how long, being half-dead. He figured it must have been something pretty bad. He almost laughed.

Beginning to feel the fatigue catch up with him, he considered his tile floor, debating on whether or not he should just go to bed and let the damn memories consume him.

While considering this, somewhere, out of the corner of his mind, an image suddenly flashed, making him jump, almost falling off the precarious edge of his kitchen chair.

It wasn't blurry like most of the images he had visited in his vegetative state. One of those select few that stood out in his mind; one that had some sort of meaning.

All of it was white. Like flour. Or bleach. The familiar tinge and slight chemical smell of antiseptic filled his nose, making him cringe. A hospital. God, how he hated hospitals.

Already feeling a sense of horrible dread, it came in a much stronger wave, for what reason he did not know. Rather, he didn't want to know. It was the hallway of a hospital. Empty at the moment, he seemed to be walking through it, searching for something. It was like an other-worldly video camera was swiveling around, side-to-side, taking in the fine lines. The details. Like the crack in the plaster ceiling above it, and the cruel gleaming of the sterile silver trays with horrid instruments on them, making the emptiness almost creepier.

Somewhere, in his sub-conscious mind, he panicked, knowing that this was not a scene he had visited before. No deja-vu, here… Of course, this was the only emotion that had been un-earthed after possible hours of cancerous brooding.

He knew it was probably something that he would see. A premonition.

The camera kept moving forward, faster and faster. He could almost feel the panic that the movements were emitting. Soon, it became something of a blur; the shadows in the walls were the only thing that indicated that it was not just a mass of bright, too-clean white. Un-yielding, it seemed he was running. Running faster and faster… all the time…

And then it stopped.

His sub-conscious was staring worriedly at a grayish-white door with nothing but a small, standard square window. Trying the handle, he found that the door was firmly locked. He could almost feel himself frowning. _Some premonition this is…_

Peeking inside the window, there was another hallway. This one was much darker, with a single fluorescent light at the end of it. Peering into the opening, he saw a silhouetted figure at the end of the hallway. It was a girl.

A young girl by the looks of her skinniness and stature. She was running toward him, her arms pumping; only until she was a few feet away from the door, did he get a good look at her.

She couldn't have been older than 15, with red hair and large blue eyes that were currently filled with unadulterated panic. She took a wide-eyed glance at him, before trying to open the door. He watched as her as her face contorted with dread and frustration. Apparently, the door was locked from the inside as well.

The girl threw her gaze up to him, her expression distraught and desperate; as though, if she didn't get out, her whole world would collapse. She began to pound on the door with her fists, her eyes searching his. When she saw he couldn't help her, she began screaming 'Help me!' to someone who, obviously, wasn't there.

He couldn't hear her. Words were plainly coming out of her mouth, but all he heard was a ringing silence. It was chilling.

Suddenly, he was being forcefully pulled away from the girl at the window. Her eyes were wide with horror and shock; a small hand pressed against the glass in an effort to reach out to him.

His own eye widened in pure horror when the silence suddenly vanished, and that he could hear the girl's piercing, agonizing scream.

"KAKASHI!!"

His vision tunneling around the girl's terrified face, before the white glare of the hospital faded into black as Kakashi Hatake collapsed, most ungracefully, on his wooden kitchen table.


End file.
